4. RIP: The 4th Estate

Posted
12/5/16

The daily newspaper dies in 2017.

Don’t read one anyway? Why should you care?

For nearly a century, fat-staffed newsrooms, populated with reporter-class curmudgeons who questioned authority at every turn and made it their life’s mission to expose the bad guys, set the agenda for public discourse.

Back then, broadcast outlets didn’t have the staffing, investigative chops or clout the print world did.

Over the years, more expedient media – radio, TV, cable and now digital outlets – and a far less patient audience whacked newspapers’ laborious printing processes that accommodated tedious layers of fact-checking, editor scrutiny and other exercises in thoughtfulness.

But what stands out in 2017 is the perfect storm that’s been raking over the so-called mainstream media this autumn.

Poll after poll show trust rates well below 10 percent. Then, the “mainstream” get the presidential race all wrong, driving barely detectable positive sentiment deeper into the mud.

But there’s more that unfolded in the fall of 2016.

The financial fundamentals of media – print, digital and broadcast outlets largely owned by one of six mega corporations – hit lows not seen since the economy’s fall in 2008-09. Declining revenue is triggering layoffs and massive expense reductions. They’ll continue in early 2017.

Sinking revenue

Second- and third-quarter 2016 revenue for all major newspaper companies is dramatically down – from 12 to 18 percent. That necessitated rounds of layoffs at The New York Times; News Corp., which includes The Wall Street Journal; Gannett, America’s biggest newspaper company; and many others.

The across-the-board bad news prompted staffing cutbacks, merged operations and reductions in published space allocated for news by those companies and others.

The industry is closing in on a decade of dramatic cutbacks in reporting and editing power. According to estimates from The American Society of News Editors and Poynter Institute, those reductions add up to about half of all newsroom jobs being eliminated in less than 10 years.

TREND FORECAST:Expect dramatic shifts to begin early in 2017. National and metro newspapers, as well as smaller newspapers, will aggressively cut space for news to save costs. Print-publication frequency will reduce. The daily newspaper – as we know it today as something you hold in your hand and page through – will fade.

Investigative and in-depth reporting will become even more scant. That will leave the door wide open for unprofessional, poorly resourced and purely biased media to produce shoddy, untrustworthy reporting disguised as legitimate and in-depth.

The truth will be harder to find.

And when upstart or existing alternative-news sites begin to make news, the mainstream media, taking their last breaths, will label it “fake news.”

I could not believe the NY Sunday Times on the weekend before he election. NINE hostile Trump make believe articles, and so brazen! I usually get the NY Post and the Times, assuming that the truth is somewhere in the middle. That was the last NY times I will ever purchase!

GERALD - This is your opportunity! Create a web page similar to the Drudge Report, and provide links to the stories you tell us about on the daily Trends in the News. You do the business and financial areas, and let Drudge do the normal news. Many of the publications you tell us about, no one even knows about. Drudge makes good money with it, and so can you. I think you can hire a college kid to simply place the links on the web page. This would also allow us to read the full article as opposed to putting pressure on you for a fast summary.

The "fourth estate" is done. We used to rely on them to keep the government under some kind of observation. Now they are simply working for the politicians!

Thursday, December 8, 2016

alpha7B5

Well, at least I can say we live in very interesting times and this very moment can and most probably will be a very important breakpoint in history (in one, a positive for society, or the other, negative for society, way). It all depends on few things though. On one side there's so called "4th Estate" and a rising question, what this seemingly pretty heavily wounded beast will do, for its masters, of course, not for its own survival! We have to bear in mind this beast has only been half "domesticated", or - perhaps we should better say - it has been, gradually, over the years and last decades even more so, intentionally made half-wild again! In any case one has to be aware this beast is still on a leash of their owners and most importantly - those owners have their master(s), too! On the other side there are the masses, the audience. If they don't pay the attention and react immediately, resolutely and accordingly, the big game or at least one very critical part of it will be soon over! The severity level of particular situation in the USA as well as globally can simply be assessed by solely studying the actions of certain mediating parties (e.g CIA et al.) that are trying to help the wounded beast, not with bandages, but with short effective high-energy potion, and to lead it somehow and for every price out of the ring's corner, so to say. (...)

P.S.: Few days ago I read the story (didn't finish yet!) about Myron C. Fagan and the message he had delivered back in 1967. Here's the audio recording and also the transcript of his speech (with additional comments etc.). I highly recommend!